A true story, set in the future. About seeds and genetic diversity, about growth and decay, about love and war, about hunger of all kinds. About what it means to be human, even when all your humanity is stripped away.
Alyssa and Maksim both work at the Institute of Plant Genetic Resources in the center of the city. The Institute houses the world's first seed bank - a repository of irreplaceable seeds from around the globe - a priceless trove of living genetic diversity, which holds the potential to transform modern agriculture.
The two young botanists fall in love as the world wages war around them. The enemy surrounds the city, cutting them off from the rest of Russia, from electricity, from warmth and from food. A record-breaking, desperate winter sets in and the city slowly, painfully, begins to starve to death. Savagery transplants civility. The city begins to eat itself from the inside out.
Maksim and Alyssa defend the seed bank and its priceless collection of edible specimens - the future of their nation's food supply - from the starving masses of the city, the enemy, hoards of rats, and each other.
Part documentary, part legend, One Man Dies a Million Times is the true story of the seed bank and the botanists who worked there throughout the Siege of Leningrad (1941 – 1944).
Though the characters portrayed in this film actually lived, and the events they experienced actually happened, this is not a reenactment. The narrative has been transplanted from 1940’s Leningrad to modern day. Excised from the bounds of documentary, drama and the otherworldly sense of history, this story is both familiar and relevant. Alyssa and Maksim’s courage and conviction underscores the importance of the seed bank that, miraculously, is still in existence.
The N. I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources still stands in the middle of what is now called St. Petersburg. As we face declining food security, climate change, monocultures, factory farming, seed patenting, and disappearing ecosystems, this collection is especially critical in today’s world. Despite great strides in advancement, biotechnology cannot invent nor can it replace the genetic diversity that these scientists protected with their lives.
The immense collection at the Vavilov Institute remains one of the world’s most precious treasures.
ALYSSA
Played by Alyssa Lozovskaya. A Russian actress and model, she began her professional career as Sonya in “Shameless” (RU TV series) at the age of 19, while studying at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts. Lozovskaya is best known for her role as Daria in “Gogol. The Beginning.” She has also appeared as Ira Shorina the leading role in detective drama series, “Sparta” (available soon on Netflix).
MAKSIM
Played by Maksim Blinov. An actor of both theater and cinema, Blinov graduated from the Theater Academy of St. Petersburg in 2010. From 2010 until 2017 he performed in Moscow Art Theater. Since then, he has been performing at the Masterskaya Theater in St. Petersburg. In 2017, Blinov was nominated for the Russian National Theater Award and the Golden Mask Festival for "Best Actor" for his role in the Bulgakov adaptation, "Notes of a Young Doctor." In 2017, Blinov won the St. Petersburg Theatrical Prize for “Breakthrough Actor of the Year.”
JESSICA ORECK [Writer/Director]
Jessica makes projects large and small that hope to re-inspire a sense of wonder about the world of the everyday. She’s made a few features (Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys, and The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga).
And she makes shorts too. She has two animated series for TED and several series for the soon-to-launch, online, educational, children’s network.
This is Jessica's first fiction film.
SEAN PRICE WILLIAMS [Director of Photography]
Known for his textured, fluid camerawork and a heightened attention to available light. The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody described Williams as "the cinematographer for many of the best and most significant independent films of the past decade, fiction and documentary.”
Along with greats like Albert Maysles and Abel Ferrara, Williams has worked with other celebrated figures of the independent film scene such as Alex Ross Perry, the Safdie brothers, Kate Lyn Sheil, Robert Greene, Jessica Oreck, Bob Byington, and Michael Almareda.